Pagan Spring: A Mystery (A Max Tudor Novel)

by Malliet, G. M.

  “I see the village grapevine has alerted you to the situation,” said Farley. “Or are you honestly here on other business?”

  “A bit of both,” admitted Max.

  Farley smiled, not in the least bit embarrassed or put out. “I would say, ‘This isn’t what it looks like,’ but in fact, it is what it looks like. Actually, unless you are wholly lacking in imagination, what you see before you is exactly what it seems.”

  “I do see,” said Max. “And I wonder … I wonder if I might have a word, since you’re here?”

  Farley looked over at Melinda, who lifted her eyes to his. Farley quietly took Melinda’s hand. She was alight with happiness, her thin frame aquiver like a whippet’s, and she probably would have agreed to any suggestion so long as it came from Farley. Smiling, she threw her left arm wide, gesturing that they should follow her, and then fairly skipped toward that large living area at the back of the house (what Max thought they would call a “family room” in the U.S.).

  As they followed her down the wide hall, a hall fit for a coronation, Farley said to Max, “Mel and I have … formed an attachment. Lying about it now would only make us look guilty, given the circumstances—what’s happened with Thaddeus and all. It was Bernadina Steed who introduced us, actually. I was sent over to advise, ended up doing a few minor repairs while I was here, and … well. I’m good with my hands, you see. I mean to say—um. You know. But I hope we can count on you to be discreet, Father?”

  Max shook his head. “No, you can’t, actually.”

  “I thought vicars had to be, well…”

  “Tactful?” said Max, finishing for him. “It’s a murder investigation, and that’s always a game changer. You can count on me not to gossip needlessly, but withholding what I know to be relevant to the investigation isn’t possible. I’m sure you can understand why, when you think about it. Besides, I shouldn’t count on someone else in the village not knowing about this already and telling the police. In your shoes, I would tell the police straightaway, before they find out for themselves.”

  “This has nothing to do with Thaddeus’s death. You have my word,” said Farley. Melinda, who had stopped and turned, waiting for them to catch up, nodded earnestly.

  “You have our word,” she said solemnly.

  Well, that’s all right, then. Thinking the police might need more than their word, he peered at them both, taking in Farley’s matinee-idol looks and putting to account his flashy lifestyle. Appearances, Max thought, might be deceptive. They so often were. Certainly this pair seemed ideally matched, which Max could not have said of Melinda and her so recently deceased husband. Melinda was close to Farley in age, similar to him in looks, and they seemed to have similar tastes, something Farley confirmed when, gesturing toward the grand hallway, so out of place and proportion, he said, “I’m helping Melinda decide what to do about Bottle Palace here. I think”—and here he shot her a fond look—“I think she’s at last willing to agree with me that the house would be worth more if the modern part were demolished or vastly revised to fit the intention of the original builder, however many centuries ago he set those intentions. I’d plump for demolishing the thing.”

  “And I’ve told him,” she said sweetly, “the house was completely Thaddeus’s idea. I knew the Jekyll and Hyde nature of the place would be a challenge, to say the least. But as it turned out, interior decorating was the least of my worries. The later addition barely meets code. We’ve had a hundred workmen in and out of here trying to make it habitable.”

  “I understand the house had a particular meaning for your husband,” said Max.

  “Yes. It’s pathetic, really. He was returning in triumph to the scenes of his childhood. This was basically a ramshackle farmhouse when he lived here as a child—nothing special about it. But with the later addition it became—to him—a most desirable property, because it was big. You don’t have to be Freud to figure that one out. He had made it at last, he was rich—at least by the standards of the area—and he wanted to be sure everyone knew it. He was really a city boy at heart, so this rustication didn’t really suit. But Thaddeus was determined and at first, at any rate, he was happy with the decision.” She thought a moment and corrected herself. “With his decision. I like it here. I’ve adapted”—and here she tossed a coy look at Farley—“but I wouldn’t have chosen it for myself, by myself.”

  “Was there a reason for that, do you think? I mean, had someone treated him badly, that he felt he had to show off his success?”

  Melinda shrugged inside her oversized jumper. “He never said, if so. I think it was just his nature. I remember thinking, many times: Big fish, small pond. He liked to impress, Father. Needed desperately to impress. And in London, there were fewer people anymore who even knew who he was or who he had been. Particularly among the younger generation. I’d say his fan base there was approaching zero. So Nether Monkslip fulfilled a long-held fantasy. Please have a seat.”

  They had been standing as they talked. Now she pointed to a low sofa ranged before the brick fireplace. The sofa looked like it could easily seat ten people. Max opted instead for the matching side chair, which sat at a ninety-degree angle. The loving couple nestled in the corner of the sofa nearest Max. On the low table before them was a tray holding a teapot and some biscuits and chocolates.

  “The tea’s gone cold, I’m afraid. Shall I get some more?” Melinda asked.

  Both men shook their heads, but Farley leaned over and picked up the plate of sweets, offering it to Melinda. She gazed longingly at the exquisitely decorated biscuits with their swirls of white and dark chocolate. Those have to have come from the Cavalier, thought Max, recognizing Elka’s yin-and-yang specialty biscuits. He was astonished to hear weight-conscious Melinda say, “Well, maybe just one.” She actually took two.

  Wonders never cease, Max thought. Out of the critical gaze of her husband, she was eating again. He half-expected her to look around to make sure Thaddeus wasn’t watching. The transformation was complete. But—what had she been willing to do to throw off that yoke?

  “Do you know,” Max said to Farley, “I think I would like some tea after all. And I would like a private word with Melinda about the final arrangements for Thaddeus. Would you mind…?”

  Again, Farley proved himself impervious. He smiled and, picking up the teapot, took himself out of the room. Max waited until the sound of his footsteps receded, then said to Melinda, “I can only let you make your own choices, but I don’t think it is particularly wise for Farley to be here. It’s bound to cause talk and raise suspicion, complications you won’t need. You do understand—the police are going to be looking for answers. DCI Cotton is an honorable man and a decent cop, but even good cops make mistakes. Especially when presented with clichés.”

  “I don’t see why I should pretend,” said Melinda. “I am in love with Farley. And he with me. And by the way, I had nothing to do with Thaddeus’s death. That was just … unfortunate timing. I was going to leave him anyway.”

  The resemblance to a pouting four-year-old was near perfect. Max, thinking Thaddeus probably found the timing unfortunate also, merely said, “Don’t hand them your head on a platter is all I’m saying. Play it cool. Be cool. The spouse is always the main suspect, the first person police look at. Cotton wouldn’t be doing his job unless he looked very closely at you, at what you do, and at what you’ve been doing.” Because he wasn’t certain her instinct for self-preservation was at an all-time high, he added, “If they learn Farley was part of this scenario, which they are nearly certain to do, he could be in trouble also.”

  That did the trick. For the first time, in her concern for Farley, Melinda seemed to realize the precariousness of the entire situation. She really was one of the most other-directed people Max had ever met. Max found himself hoping she wasn’t trading one toxic attachment for another—her relationship with Thaddeus had been anything but healthy. If Farley proved likewise to be the sort to take advantage of a pliant nature, well … onl
y time would tell. The best Max could hope for now was to extricate her from suspicion in having anything to do with Thaddeus’s death—assuming she was innocent.

  “Now, before Farley gets back,” said Max, “tell me everything you know, or think you know, about what’s been going on here.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Hot Water

  “Since you think it’s so important, I’ll tell you that Farley and I hardly ever—you know—got together, really,” Melinda told Max. “There weren’t that many chances. We met on Saturday nights, when we could. That was the only time we could guarantee any extended time with each other. We stole other opportunities sometimes…” Melinda gave Max a shy teenager smile. “So you see, it wasn’t that big a deal—Inspector Cotton will have to realize it wasn’t like we were meeting up all the time.”

  “It’s more likely Cotton will think that the fact you had to ration your time together so strictly was an added motive for murder.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “Start thinking that way, Melinda,” said Max. “Now, Thaddeus had been married before, you said.”

  “That’s right. His wife was French—that’s why his accent stayed in such good form. We met not long after she died. I was—well, I was still married, but only just. I fell head over heels when I met Thaddeus. Yes, you can look surprised—he was much older. But that had nothing to do with it. We seemed made for each other. At first.”

  “Go on,” Max said.

  “I’m not sure what all you want to know. I discovered he was a real actor. And by that, I mean he acted nonstop. He was never ‘off.’ It’s very hard to live with, that is. You never know what you’ve got. A comedian one day, a tragedian the next.”

  Max nodded. During his time with MI5, he had had to disappear into a role, sometimes for months on end. It was no wonder he had felt his psyche was fragmented by the time he left the outfit. Did actors, on leaving a play or movie, feel the same way? A more troublesome question was whether that was why they were attracted to role-playing in the first place. Was it a symptom of something in their upbringings that made their characters require some assembly?

  “What else can you tell me?” Max prompted.

  “Well, he was adopted, and I always thought he was insecure because of that. The people who adopted him already had children of their own—a reversal of the usual process, where childless couples adopt and then find they’re expecting one of their own.

  “Insecure,” mused Max. “Passive-aggressive, would you say?”

  She considered this diagnosis. “No,” she said at last. “No, he usually skipped right over the passive part and went straight for the jugular.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Max. “That must have made things difficult for you.”

  She acknowledged the sympathy with a slight shrug. “I can tell you one troubling bit of scandal from his past,” she said. “His first wife was thought to be a suicide. I believe the story was that she was driven to suicide, and absolutely I believe it now. I have often felt the same way. There was no escape from him. And the thing no one tells you is it takes money to leave a marriage.”

  Max assumed that meant there had been a prenuptial agreement.

  “Yes.” She replied, without embellishment, to his question on this topic. But she was not through talking about Thaddeus’s first wife. “She was rich, you know. I wasn’t, particularly. That must mean he loved me at one time. Don’t you think?”

  Max had no answer for that. Did she really care what Thaddeus had thought? Farley’s being in the next room spoke to the opposite reaction.

  “I should tell you something,” said Melinda. “Those earrings I told you about when you were here with Inspector Cotton … those engagement earrings I lost?”

  “Yes?”

  “I think I may have been with Farley when I lost them. But I couldn’t—you do see, don’t you? I couldn’t tell the detective that.”

  Max sighed.

  “You’re going to have to tell him now. You’re going to have to tell him everything.”

  She just looked at Max.

  “But this couldn’t have anything to do with what happened to Thaddeus,” she insisted.

  “That doesn’t matter. Everything. Do you understand, Melinda? No matter what happens, the only thing that can save you here is the truth.” And that, thought Max, applies whether she’s guilty of this crime or not. The lies piled upon lies would only hurt her case, if it came to pass there was a case built against her. And against Farley, for that matter.

  There was the trace of a sulk, and Max made as if to leave, as if to wash his hands of her.

  “Oh, all right,” she said. She held up her hands in surrender, and she sighed. “It’s been so lonely for me here,” she said, as if to explain her behavior. “Even though people have been kind—invitations to join the book club and so on.”

  Ah, the book club, thought Max. The Nether Monkslip Book Club—not to be confused with its offshoot, the Writers’ Square, with which it ran somewhat in tandem—recently had selected Sister Carrie for discussion, in the mistaken impression it concerned the travails of an Anglican nun rather than the arguably more interesting travails of a kept woman, chorus girl, and, ultimately, theater star. The Reverend Max Tudor suspected Suzanna Winship might have been behind the choice, but that could not be proven. Nonetheless, it did have, for Suzanna, the happy, if unintended, effect of offending old Mrs. Clark to such an extent she had resigned “forthwith,” in writing, from the club. (“Does anyone but a solicitor say ‘forthwith’ anymore?” Suzanna had asked the group, reading aloud the note in the spidery handwriting, her eyes aglow with delight.) Max had spent many frustrating hours drinking gallons of tea and trying to woo Mrs. Clark back, for in truth she was a lonely old soul, a condition no doubt owing to her general prickliness, and the book club had been one of her few social outlets. Believing Max when he repeatedly assured her the selection of Sister Carrie had been an innocent mistake, she had finally been won over, “but with grave reservations,” all of which were iterated in another open letter to the book club. Suzanna had been sternly forbidden by Max to read aloud from this letter. Meekly, she had agreed to Mrs. Clark’s return, but could not help adding that Mrs. Clark could return “forthwith.”

  The book club next had tried reading Beowolf, a tale most of them got a third of the way through, exhibiting all the careless pleasure of mourners at a funeral, before abandoning the effort. It was an experiment with Great Books quickly discarded in favor of the new bio of a prime minister’s wife. Mrs. Clark had been outvoted this time.

  Farley returned to the room just then, and Melinda turned instantly to him, as though he had come with a fire ax to rescue her. Their attraction seemed to be mutual; Farley, putting down the replenished teapot, sat down and solicitously took her hands in his.

  Max felt any useful information from Melinda would dry up in the face of her waning attention. She only had eyes for Farley.

  Max said his good-byes to the spellbound pair.

  CHAPTER 12

  Word on the Street

  Tuesday, March 27

  The next day, DCI Cotton left a message for Max with Mrs. Hooser, saying that the preliminary test results had come back. Would Max have a moment to meet him for a ploughman’s lunch at the Horseshoe? The police had set up temporary quarters in upstairs rooms there to conduct their investigation. This message Mrs. Hooser had delivered, heart pulsing with curiosity beneath her old-fashioned housedress: What test results? Swearing her to secrecy about Cotton’s message, but with faint hope she could live up to her promise for even an hour (she was already untying her apron, no doubt preparing to head out to purchase some “forgotten” item like a bottle of Fairy washing-up liquid from the little shop attached to the post office), Max dialed the DCI’s mobile number and arranged a time to meet.

  Before he left, Max pulled a gray jumper over his head. It was warm against his skin and carried a faint trace of Awena
’s scent. He straightened the clerical collar that showed above the crew neckline, checking his appearance in the mirror. His dark hair remained stubbornly wayward, but hair products only seemed to make it worse. Besides, Awena claimed that tousled look was all the rage now.

  He ran downstairs and gave a shout-out to Mrs. Hooser, on the million-in-one chance she was still in the kitchen. He was just pulling open the front door when he spotted another page of A4 paper on the rug beneath the mail slot. This time, he picked up the missive with gloved hands.

  He read, “We are orphanes and fatherlesse, our mothers are as widowes.” This was followed by a different quote, also from the Bible: “They slay the widowe and the stranger: and murder the fatherlesse.”

  From the antiquated spelling, Max surmised someone was copying from the 1611 King James version. He repeated the steps he’d taken with the previous message, retrieving from the kitchen a clean plastic bag to slide the page inside. He set out again to meet Cotton, turning the quotations over in his mind, and making a slight detour up Church Street to the High, sweeping a proprietary glance over St. Edwold’s. The stone church might have been there since the dawn of mankind, so ancient and immovable did it appear, as if held together not by mortar but by some magic Nano glue. There was comfort in thinking that long after he himself had gone, St. Edwold’s would stand. As he passed beneath the tower, the church bell announced the hour in its jubilant way.

  Good. Maurice had finally brought Nether Monkslip into line with British Summer Time.

  Max at times worried his church might become redundant—repurposed or abandoned, as so many churches in the UK had been. St. Edwold’s was a jewel in a perfect setting, and Max felt it had to be preserved, and not just as a beautiful and historic structure. He wanted to make St. Edwold’s as vital to village life as it had been in centuries past, and for people of all faiths. St. Edwold’s could once again be the place where the community came together for support in times of joy and sorrow.